


all their words for glory

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alphynecentric, Body Horror, Disabled Character, Eye Trauma, F/F, Graphic Description of Injury, Pre-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 22:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10626219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: In which Alphys gets the opportunity to further study DT poisoning; or, it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _(I flooded my sleeves as I drove home again_ – the body is rot waiting to happen.)
> 
> usually i write undyne as having been born with only one eye, but as it happens i am much less married to my undyne and alphys headcanons than i am to the ones i have for the dreemurrs and the human kids.

“Let me see,” you say, and the steadiness of your voice in this moment is the worst lie you’ve ever told in a career built brick by brick from them.

She lets you see. It is predictably horrible. The strong solid wall of Undyne’s fingers comes unwoven gently, and from underneath it the ruin of her left eye slops out like a broken egg yolk, more sludgy than runny. The pupil and iris and sclera and all the delicate tracery of nerves and blood vessels rendered into so much pulpy gloop.

You’re seized by the mad desire to reach out and touch it to verify consistency, but you’ve seen enough to be sure. Months of handling the amalgamates and observing the speed at which they ooze is more than enough for you to be able to recognize DT poisoning when you see it.

“D-Does it—hurt,” you ask, your voice strange and stilted and tinny in your own ears. There’s a weird numb pounding in the vicinity of your heart. The temptation to close your third eyelids and observe the world through their protective translucent veil is unreal, but if you gave your disgust and yawning horror even a fraction of an inch, you would absolutely faint; you’re showing all the warning signs for syncope as it is. Undyne deserves better than to be left with your useless gasping meat sack on top of everything else, and if you let her go—there’s no telling what the consequences will be for you. Best to keep right on dissociating, then.

“Nah,” Undyne says as if from very far away. But there’s tension in the muscles of her cheeks as she says so, and her teeth press against her lower lip, which she has half sucked into her mouth. You spend so much time watching her, in person or over your security cameras; the rough beautiful lines of her face, the handsome arch of her fins, degrees of tension in her musculature. “It’s just… gross? The eye doesn’t feel like anything, I mean hell, it’s not even numb in there. It’s just like, supremely fucking nasty.” And: “I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, the remaining eye and the draining socket both opening wide. “I just panicked like an asshole and came barging in. I should’ve asked before I dropped all this in your lap.”

“I-it’s fine,” you say, though your smile is trembling and thin. You can’t say that you’re used to it, that you’re probably best equipped to handle this of anyone in the whole underground. “I can handle it, I’m—I’m glad you came to me.”

Which is true enough, but still far enough from the truth that it just makes you feel sicker when she gets embarrassed and half grins.

You get out a plastic specimen cup, sterilized, to collect the ooze running down the side of Undyne’s face, which startles her more than anything else has since she barged into your lab. “I dunno what I was expecting, a tissue or something,” she jokes, and you try to smile but it just goes grim.

“N—now I c-can’t d-do much in the, in the way of regenerating this, or uh, or f-fixing it up or r-reattaching it, it’s pretty much an uh, an uh,” and you get stuck while screwing on the cap.

“An ex-eye,” Undyne supplies.

“Right. B-but I c-can study it and t-try to understand more about, about why this happened.” Though you know all too well. “T—tell me again ab-bout what happened when you…?”

“I went to go see Asgore but he was having a bad day,” Undyne recites again. She blinks and makes a face when her eyelid shutters and crumples over the empty socket. “This is _weird._ Anyway he like—you know how he gets sometimes, all he wants to talk about is his ex and his son and his foster kid. Getting all weird and melancholy over the human souls. I dunno—I hate it? Like—seeing the guy so down. Sometimes I think the only reason he hasn’t fallen down is because he feels too responsible for everyone.” Her face screws up bitter and helpless, and guilt runs all through your guts. That’s why you’re here, to find another way, but you can’t even do your job anymore because you’re such a pathetic fuckup. “And we’re so close!! We can finally get revenge on the humans for how long we’ve been stuck down here and all the pain they put him through.

“So I went to train and I got really fired up, like, I could feel the hearts of the whole underground beating as one! And then—” she raises her hands and makes a horrible squelchy sound effect with her mouth— “there goes my whole damn eye!”

Undyne rests her hands on her thighs and squints at you. “Alphys… you don’t actually _know_ something about this? Only you’re making that scrunchy face like you do??”

You sigh. “I c-can’t be completely sure. B-but, um, i-it’s… a little to do with how monsters are made, and why we… um, turn to d-dust when we die. There’s an… an element, a feeling, that humans have called ‘determination’ that monsters c-can only withstand in, uhh, small quantities. It’s!!! It’s just speculation, b-but we have reason to believe that… that determination is how humans won the war all those years ago. Um, but Boss Monsters a-are the only monsters that c-can really handle b-big amounts of it. Ordinary monsters like us, with average souls… it m-messes with the s-state of our matter, a-and sometimes we c-can’t stay… um, solid anymore.”

Undyne, who’s squinted at you the whole time you’ve bumbled through a cursory explanation of DT, says seriously and slowly, “So this could happen again.”

You look at her, the most brilliant and beautiful and fiery person you’ve ever known; at Undyne, who feels so much for everyone around her that she can’t contain it, who has more resolve than any other monster, even the king. And it breaks your heart, because to tell her this feels like trying to kill the person she is, the person you love so much.

“It c-could happen again,” you say. She needs to know. She needs to know, so that she can make informed choices about what to do. If there’s one right thing you can ever do in your miserable existence, it’s this.

Undyne sighs and straightens up in her seat. “I see.”

“Undyne—” you squawk out, and then lose all your built-up steam when she just smiles lopsided at you.

“I’m a Royal Knight,” she says. “So it’s expected of me that I might have to lay down my life in the line of duty, for love of country and king. But—I dunno, if I know to be careful about this I can at least, uh, try to make sure it’s not in vain if I am gonna die.”

She smiles at you here and something of her expression speaks of promises and resolutions that might be private but are so bright and burning that you think you can guess at their weight.

“D-don’t do anything foolish,” you blurt out, like you’ve got any right.

Undyne’s grin widens, shining and final. “Can’t really tell you I won’t,” she says. “Foolish is sorta in my job description, Alph.”

**Author's Note:**

> UNDYNE: ...Alphys...   
>  UNDYNE: This is what I was afraid of...   
>  UNDYNE: This is why I never told you...   
>          ( — _Neutral Route; Undyne's defeat_ )


End file.
